Underworld star Kate Beckinsale has had it with analysis of women's looks and body shaming, and she shared her thoughts on Instagram in a searing post.
Beckinsale, who is the mother of a teenage daughter, writes that women should band together and "resist being distracted and tormented by what our bodies are naturally doing and free that energy for joy and to effect change."
The actor was responding to a story that commented on her age (inaccurately). While the piece positively compared her body to that of much younger women, she points out that reducing women to a pile of parts to be picked about is problematic at a minimum.
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"I urge us all, as females, to see it for what it is. Fear of YOU," Beckinsale writes. "Fear of the magical mystery shit a woman can do with her magical body. Fear of what she can withhold or bestow."
She also draws a very clear line from objectification to harassment, explaining, "It’s the same impulse to reduce the power of a pretty girl who wouldn’t date you in school by becoming a big boss and getting your penis out at a meeting it made you feel powerful to set, knowing what you were going to do."
Women (and men) who act are constantly judged on, and reduced to, their appearance. When a woman is seen as a collection of body parts, it is not a huge leap to treat them as less than.
Calling for an end to objectification, she writes, "I just want to get to where this nonsense feels as archaic as smoking on planes-we put up with it, it harmed us, and we don’t miss it . I turned eleven years older over Thanksgiving."
She did not mince words in her full post:
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